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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29341353">time after time</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/intimacycaricature/pseuds/intimacycaricature'>intimacycaricature</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Immortal Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), M/M, Memory Loss, Non-Graphic Violence, Not Canon Compliant, POV Second Person, Time Travel, Time Travelling Karl Jacobs, it was when i started writing lol, listen i KNOW but trust me okay, y'all can have some karlnap. as a treat</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 12:41:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,652</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29341353</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/intimacycaricature/pseuds/intimacycaricature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of fading memories from one Karl Jacobs.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Karl Jacobs/Sapnap</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>74</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>time after time</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>heyyyy dsmp ao3 lol</p>
<p>so… a note about canon compliance. when i started writing this (pre-masquerade episode) it could’ve fit with the canon storyline, but as y’all know karl threw a bunch of lore at us during that last episode which… adjusted a lot of things</p>
<p>i guess i could’ve changed this story to fit with the new info, but i would’ve had to throw out most of my worldbuilding and stuff, so. lucky for us, it’s my fic and i get to choose the lore</p>
<p>also i kicked quackity out of the polycule for this one. sorry</p>
<p>anyway, pls enjoy 2660 words of Karl angst :)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Your name is Karl Jacobs, and you are a time traveler.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You have known these two things to be true ever since you were young. You are part of a dying breed, most of your people long dead at the hands of those who fear your power. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It is for that particular reason that you do not know how to time travel. Not really, anyway. You know the mechanics, the bare minimum. You know how to travel through time, you know how to assimilate yourself quickly. You know very little else. You lost everything at such a young age that there is no one left to guide you, no one left to teach you that which you do not know.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And for the record, there is much you do not know. You do not know the effects of constant time travel on the mind and body. You do not know that fate is largely set, that there is very little you can do to shift the outcome of destiny. You do not know that the constant loop you have set yourself in, this desperate scramble to ‘fix’ the timeline, is only succeeding in destroying you. You are learning all of these things, very slowly. By the time they register, it may be too late for you.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But for now, you travel. You jump centuries to learn about your own world, and you jump mere months to tweak your actions. It is all you know how to do.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>For a very long time now, you have known that everyone you’ve ever cared about is doomed. It ends the same way every time, in death and destruction at the hands of one man. You have tried so many times to break the chain, and thus far you have failed. You feel almost obligated now, to change the course of history.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If you have to travel back and forth into oblivion, let time and space tear you apart, you will. You will stop Dream if it’s the last thing you do.</span>
</p>
<p>----------</p>
<p>
  <span>Your name is Karl Jacobs, and you are a time traveler.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>For a long time, you were the only one who knew this.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But</span>
  <em>
    <span> he</span>
  </em>
  <span> knows.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You should have known better than to involve yourself with that town in the past. You violated one of your own rules: never change things outside of your own time, if you can help it. But the townspeople fascinated you, and you could not help how they drew you closer.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When you first saw him, you thought you might be just as mad as the town residents. Because— it couldn’t be him, surely it was just a coincidence. But the same mask, same voice, the same</span>
  <em>
    <span> man</span>
  </em>
  <span> was not a coincidence. You don’t know how it’s possible. But somehow, you get the feeling that the masked man from your time is not 21 like he claims to be.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cornelius did not recognize you (obviously, you weren’t even born yet).</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But when you returned to your own time, Dream did.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It takes mere hours for him to find you. He corners you, holds an axe to your throat, and tells you in no uncertain terms that he will take every one of your remaining lives if you ever say a word about his true nature to anyone. You remind him that keeping secrets is what you</span>
  <em>
    <span> do</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and he scoffs, but he lets you go. If he knew why you were time traveling, why you always seem so unbothered by conflict on the server, he would not keep you alive. You know that.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lucky for you, he doesn’t.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>----------</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Your name is Karl Jacobs, and you are a time traveler.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You used to be proud to say that. Now, it scares you.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It is your only purpose in this life to fix what is broken. To alter time in such a way that evil does not prevail. You have yet to succeed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You are beginning to forget. Just little things, at first. But it gets worse the more you reset and start all over again. But you have to do it. In the meantime, your memories get fuzzier. You confuse yourself.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You thought you allied yourself with Pogtopia this time around. But you try to speak to Tommy and he nearly runs you through with his sword, screeching about how he would</span>
  <em>
    <span> never</span>
  </em>
  <span> discuss state secrets with the</span>
  <em>
    <span> enemy</span>
  </em>
  <span>, who the hell do you think he is?!</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But you could have sworn…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It doesn’t matter.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You start writing down everything. About the present, the past, everything you can think of. In the event of the worst-case scenario, you want something to go off of. You shudder to think of the chaos someone could cause if they were to take advantage of a time traveler with no memories. So you write. You write about your childhood, about your daily life, about the fate of the server. About how many times you’ve tried to stop it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You break another rule. You get careless. During your fifth reset you think</span>
  <em>
    <span> screw it</span>
  </em>
  <span> and kiss Sapnap like you’ve wanted to since the day you met.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That is the first time he doesn’t come crawling back to Dream the first chance he gets. And while it all still ends in catastrophe, maybe… maybe you’re doing something right.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You write about that, too.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>----------</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Your name is Karl Jacobs, and you are a time traveler.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You are so very </span>
  <em>
    <span>tired</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey, hey, you’re okay,” you whisper to the boy bleeding out onto your hoodie, biting back your own tears. “It’s okay, baby, I got you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was an axe to the chest this time. Very rarely is it the same method, but it happens every time. Every time, no matter what you do.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You watch the love of your life take his last breath in your arms, betrayed </span>
  <em>
    <span>again</span>
  </em>
  <span> by the immortal who he trusted over everything. Over you, even. And although this is the hundredth time over that you’ve been through this, you still scream and cry over his corpse like it’s the first time you’ve lost him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Because you were so </span>
  <em>
    <span>close</span>
  </em>
  <span> this time. You thought that maybe, just maybe, this would be it. You thought you had played your cards just right, tweaked the timeline just enough. You thought that you would get your happy ending this time.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You were wrong. Again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You know you have to move. You have to get away. If </span>
  <em>
    <span>he </span>
  </em>
  <span>finds you, if he kills you— permanently— then it will all be for nothing. All your dedication will be but a scar in the timeline, visible but ultimately ineffective. You refuse to let that happen. You press one last kiss to Sapnap’s pale forehead, and you run.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As you stumble through the destruction, you wonder, not for the first time, if this is simply meant to be. If you, just like everyone else in this land, are powerless to fate. But you can’t accept that.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When you are safely away from the carnage, you collapse in front of a small pond and try to scrub the blood from your face and hands. You know that when you get back to the past, there will be fresh clothes waiting for you. This is planned.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You wouldn’t want Sapnap worrying about all the blood.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>----------</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Your name is… Karl.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Karl Jacobs.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Right?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Yes. Your name is Karl Jacobs, and no one ever taught you the dangers of traveling forward in time.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If you were not one of the last of your kind, there might be someone to tell you that jumping to the future, especially more than a few years, is detrimental to the mind and body. That the memory loss side effect that is so common in time travel is exponentially worsened. That even without that, you may be driven mad by what you find.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But you </span>
  <em>
    <span>are</span>
  </em>
  <span> one of the last of your kind, and there is no one to advise you against jumping forward centuries.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You call yourself Isaac, just in case. But you meet three fishermen who have never even heard the name </span>
  <em>
    <span>Dream</span>
  </em>
  <span> in their lives, and you cannot decide if this is a blessing or a curse. The heroes of your story were lost to time. But so was</span>
  <em>
    <span> he</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He is not inevitable.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They live in peace. Free from conflict, from vengeful higher beings. It is everything you ever wanted. You convince yourself there’s no harm in staying a while.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You learn how they live in your time with them. You mention your second life in passing and they stare at you like you’re some sort of religious nutcase. This is when you learn that in the future, people only get one life.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You wonder what changed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>----------</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Your name is Isaac.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Wait, no. That’s not right. It’s just been so long now.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Your name is Karl. You don’t have a last name. Or do you? The others don’t, so surely you don’t either.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Your name is Karl, and you are a time traveler. It’s a miracle you even remember that, even if you don’t realize it. You have been living in a time you don’t belong to for months now. You remember very little of </span>
  <em>
    <span>before</span>
  </em>
  <span>. It doesn’t really matter, does it?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Well, sometimes it does. Sometimes you get an itch, like you should remember something, but you don’t. Certain things nag at you. Butterflies flare up in your stomach when Benjamin smiles at you, and you can’t for the life of you understand why it makes you feel so guilty. Like you’re betraying someone.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The peace does not last. You find the book. You travel across the sea. You find the city. And, like the echoes of a terrible nightmare, it all comes back to you. As the ancestor of a friend you had all but completely forgotten leads you through the passages of the underwater commune, no one notices how you have gone silent.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The history that Ranbob recounts to you is wrong in all the worst ways. They were remembered. All of them were. They were remembered so egregiously wrong, but they were remembered. All of them, except for you.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span> You find the room dedicated to you. It is bare and the book inside is vague. Ranbob does not know your name (your real name, that is). He doesn’t know anything about you. In this awful city where everything is so off-kilter, you cannot decide whether that’s a good or bad thing. While the others giggle over your personal belongings, you stand in the corner, pale-faced and dizzy. You don’t want to be here.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You want to go home.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s a funny thing. You want to be home, yes, but you almost wish you didn’t remember home at all. Because when the enderman hybrid starts picking off your friends one by one, all you can think of is how </span>
  <em>
    <span>familiar</span>
  </em>
  <span> it is. You’ve been through this so many times, in a different scenario, in a different time, but what does that matter? You’re no stranger to watching your friends die. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The final room is the worst. You had let your guard down, you had let yourself think that maybe, just maybe, the man who had caused you so much pain was lost to time. Forgotten. The dark room shrouded in neon green seems to laugh at your naivety.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Was Dream a good man?” you ask Ranbob, and you see Cletus’ body falling from the tree, you hear Benji screaming in pain, and you see— you see the remains of your home, always the last vision you see before you reset the timeline.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes,” Ranbob answers. “He was a great man.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That in itself is almost more painful than watching him slaughter Charles. You time travel just as Ranbob raises his sword to strike you, praying that such a large jump will wipe this entire experience from your memory.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It doesn’t.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>----------</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Your name is Karl Jacobs, and you are a time traveler.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You hate to admit it, but you would not remember that had it not just been forced into your mind by the horrors you witnessed in the future. You return to your own time, and you immediately curl yourself into a ball in the corner of your library.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If things were different, if you were not alone, it would be easier. Tanned hands would gently untangle your fingers from where they’re knotted tight in your own hair. Your palm would be gently pressed against a warm chest, and you would feel it slowly rise and fall with the intake of breath.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Breathe with me, Jacobs, </span>
  </em>
  <span>he would murmur. </span>
  <em>
    <span>You’re okay.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But that is not what happens. You are alone. So you pull your hair until it stings, and your breath comes so fast it makes you dizzy, and you choke on the sobs fighting their way up to your throat.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eventually, your breathing slows, and you’re able to wipe the tears from your face, standing on shaking legs. You know what you have to do. You remember some things, but not enough. So as much as it pains you, you flip through the pages of your own memories, letting them wash over you. It hurts. You hate that this is your weight to bear.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When dusk falls, it feels as if your walls are suffocating you. You’ve closed the library back up, but the knowledge that it’s just behind a bookshelf nags at the back of your mind. You’re halfway to another panic attack when someone pounds on your door. You force yourself to your feet, and as soon as you open the door, Sapnap lets himself in. He’s already launching into a story about whatever shenanigans he and Quackity are about to try and get you in on.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You just quietly close the door behind him and watch him. It’s been a while since you could do that. Just watch him laugh and wave his hands around as he speaks. It’s a funny thing, time travel. He just spoke to you yesterday. You last saw him six months ago.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So that’s why— Karl?” He stops talking. He stares at you, concern filling his gaze. “You okay?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You blink, snapped out of your thoughts. You catch your own gaze in the mirror behind him. You look awful, exhausted and skinnier than you remember. You look back at Sapnap, and you don’t even think as you launch yourself at him, throwing your arms over his shoulders and burying your face in the crook of his neck. He’s always been warm. He feels more like home than this little mountain shack ever did.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Slowly, his arms come to wrap around your midsection, tentative but firm.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey,” he whispers. “What’s wrong?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nothing,” you say, but the lump in your throat makes it sound high-pitched and strangled.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You cannot tell him the truth. You have no idea how it might affect the future, and with everything balanced on each tiny decision, you have come too far to take such a risk. At least, this is what you tell yourself. The truth is, a part of you is terrified he would convince you to accept the inevitable. To let him go. And you </span>
  <em>
    <span>can’t</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But he doesn’t ask again, so you don’t have to make up an explanation. He just holds you tighter against his chest and lets you sob into his shoulder.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Later, when you’ve both squished yourselves into a bed that’s really only meant to fit one person, you reflect. As you drift off in his arms, you recall for the first time in months </span>
  <em>
    <span>why</span>
  </em>
  <span> you put yourself through all of this. You have no obligation to stop this server from descending into chaos. And yet… the moments like this, the people like him… they are precious. They are worth saving.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And no matter what it takes, if it kills you, if it causes you to lose yourself entirely— you will save them.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>for the record this originally ended a lot Sadder (memory loss go brr) but i was convinced to end it here. hope you enjoyed nonetheless</p>
<p>hey hey hey follow me on tumblr @peachluhbotomy (it's mostly band stuff but i'm working on an mcyt sideblog!!) or on my fic blog @intimacycaricature</p>
<p>kudos/comments always appreciated :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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